So Far Away
by Corpse in a Coffin
Summary: It's all risen up in flames, now, just as he sunk to the bottom of the water. Ronald admittedly hadn't been thinking about what it would be like after he killed himself, but he's sure that if he had thought about it it hadn't been this.


A/N: Hello, mortals! I'm Silvery Wind, and this is my very first Kuroshitsuji fanfiction. It's not much, and it didn't turn out like I wanted it to, but I got the idea and I wanted to explore a little bit. I hope you enjoy. ^^

Legal junk: I don't own _Kuro_.

XXX

Ronald couldn't say he was quite so cold as he had been as he descended into the dark depths of the pond. His mind was set, and it didn't change: it was time for him to go, and seeing as how no one had come and beat his face in with a hammer, well, he felt it was time to take the matter into his own hands.

There hadn't been any light before, but there was now. He observed it through his own eyes, but almost like an outsider. What was the light? It was warming him all over, and giving him a sense of peace and dulled happiness.

A shadow was coming down upon him. The light was too inviting to give the shadow much thought, but as he watched it in that far-away way he seen that it seemed to float above him; seen that it seemed to hold something, raise that something; seen that that something hit him . . . and from that far-away place where he resided, he could only imagine that it would have hurt if he had been closer.

" _Ronald!" called a girl happily. "Ronald, look over here!"_

The image came to him as clearly as any other, and he realized that he wasn't quite so far away from it as he was the heavy water pressing down on his body.

" _Elnora!" he cried. He hadn't meant to; he had no control over his own mouth, or his own body. He was merely an observer. "Elnora, where are you?"_

He briefly wondered why his voice sounded like that of a child's, but instead of trying to deepen it his head turned from side to side, looking at the trees for his little sister.

" _Right here, silly," she said as she appeared from behind a maple. "I'm right here. Brother, why don't you come look at what I found?"_

" _In Isaiah 41:13-14, it says, 'I am the Lord your God who takes your right hand and says do not fear, I will help you.' There is no reason for us, His children, to be afraid. It is vital that we understand this, for fear leads to temptation just as much as greed."_

Ronald remembered this - what was this, a memory? - day far more clearly than he did the first one. This time, there was no guess work: he was a twelve year old boy again, and he was attending Church instead of being at the bedside of his dying sister. He wanted to be angry for being forced to relive this, but the memory did not allow it. Instead, there was only fear.

" _Throughout our lives, it is only natural to fall prey to fear. The Devil makes us feel it, you see, because he wants us to feel like we are caged animals in his own game. I warn you now, do not be fooled: it is nothing but trickery, and Lord God can deliver you from it."_

 _There was no doubt about it: Father Jacob was_ definitely _looking at him._

 _He knew, of course. He knew like everyone else in that horrible town: Ronald Knox was the reason his sister lay in bed, breathing her last breaths and thinking her last thoughts._

" _It's important to understand this part, Ronnie," said Mr. Knox, as he absently cleaned a leather shoe. "You really must understand: if you do not, then this shop will fail, you see? When I die -"_

" _\- You aren't going to die, Dad. Stop acting like you are!"_

 _The pieces of shattered glass were idle by his feet. He was too angry to think about the rudeness of his outburst._

 _For what seemed like forever, father and son sat in quiet, with the only sound being the children in the town square and Ronald's laborious breathing. After about an eternity the man started cleaning the shoe again._

" _Ronnie, sometimes these things . . . happen."_

He was twelve again, except he wasn't afraid anymore. Elnora was healthy and pretty, just as she always was before she got sick. Ronald felt a distant sense of jubilation that did not belong in the memory, but it was crushed as swiftly as a beetle when a rambunctious child found it. It was _that day_.

 _He and Elnora were running through the sunflower field, laughing all the way. Ronald barely had time to reflect how small he was in comparison to the flowers before Elnora fell, and he, taken unexpected, tripped over her._

" _Owww, Elnora! What'd you fall for?" He picked himself slowly off the ground, grumpily analyzing the scrapes that appeared on his knees._

 _She laughed at him. "Sorry! Didn't see the rock!"_

 _Grumbling, he bent to help her up. "Watch where you're going, why don't you?"_

 _Elnora rolled her eyes in that way she did that clearly suggested she was smarter than the people getting onto her. It was Mr. Knox's fault; if he hadn't have spoiled her, she wouldn't be as cheeky as she was. "Oh, do be_ quiet _, Ronald. You've only got a scratch. If you're so frustrated, then lead the -_ ow _!"_

 _She stopped speaking abruptly, and wrapped her tiny fingers around her forearm. Before Ronald could even ask what was wrong, a single bee flew away. He watched it as it did, and her breathing steadily became more labored._

" _Calm down, Elnora. It's just a little bee sting."_

" _B-But. . . ."_

Later on, no one blamed him. No one had known that she was allergic to bees in the first place, and no one, not even Dr. Carter, guessed that it would have such a strong reaction that it would kill her, even despite having quick and proper care, and despite that she lasted for just under a week. Dr. Carter even said that there might have been another cause of death, but it was clear to Ronald that he was just trying to make him feel better.

No one uttered a word that the two of them should not have been in the sunflower field in the firs place, and no one said anything about how he should have ran for help immediately, that he waited precious seconds before trying to get help.

The difference between them and him, however, was that he knew the truth: that it was him who had coerced her into running through the field, and that if it had not been for that - if they had just stuck to the forest as they always had, despite the increasing boredom - she would still be alive.

Ronald knew that he should feel that crushing weight of the guilt bearing down on him again, after seeing it replayed, but he was far too far away. . . .

 _There was a time when Ronald loved Luetta; when he wanted to buy her flowers and chocolates and take her on long walks and do all of those other cheesy things girls wanted boys to do. There was a time . . . but the time had passed._

 _She was crying and crying and crying. He had just told her that they couldn't continue seeing each other, and he was beside her, and she was crying, crying,_ crying _._

" _Luetta -"_

" _LEAVE ME ALONE, RONALD!"_

 _He flinched. He hadn't expected her to yell like that. Luetta never yelled; she was a generally quiet woman. Ronald had made her loud._

 _For a moment he waited, but when he seen that no response would be positive, he left. She needed him to leave, and he needed himself to leave._

 _There was a time when Ronald loved Luetta, but he just couldn't anymore._

 _It wasn't her fault._

 _It wasn't his, either._

 _But there was no longer any enjoyment that he could muster from seeing her. She wasn't the only one. Ronald wasn't particularly thrilled about his best friends, either, or about the business, or about doing anything that he had once loved. He wasn't happy anymore, and he needed to do something that made him happy._

 _It was perfect. Everything was perfect. No one depended on him: his mother died giving birth to Elnora, so he barely remembered her, then, of course, he had inadvertently killed Elnora, and then, at the age of eighteen, Mr. Knox died after suffering with sickness of the lungs. Ronald was eighteen years old, and the only responsibility he apparently had was to run his family's shoe business. Well, the shoe business could just rot._

 _When he was younger, he and Elnora had played in the woods just down the road from their house. They had become experts in the landscape, and Ronald knew that there was a pond that was fairly deep, if you kept going._

 _Elnora had been the one to find it. He had thought he had lost her, but she had appeared behind a tree, beckoning for him to go and look at her new discovery._

 _There were about five other ways for him to kill himself in his kitchen alone, but he didn't consider any of them. The pond was where his life truly started; it would be where it ended, too._

That, of course, was one of his last memories. After deciding what he would do, he went out the door and began the long walk to the woods. He hadn't been entirely sure that he would find it, but after what was most likely an hour and a half of trekking through the cold winter night he seen it. He had to bust through the ice (which was, thankfully, not so hard that he couldn't get passed it), and without thinking about it any further he dove right in.

Black.

Black was all around him.

He wasn't in the pond anymore, but instead was in a bed that had cool sheets and felt hard against his back. The room was so dark that he couldn't see his hand in front of him -

Wait.

 _He wasn't in the pond anymore._

Ronald hadn't felt so far away when he first woke up, but he realized that he was beginning to retreat once again. Nothing was making any sense -

The door opened, and immediately after the light in the room came on. It took a few seconds for him to realize that everything was very blurry. Why was it so blurry?

The blurry figure - a man, certainly - began coming for him, and Ronald prepared to pounce if he needed to. Instead, however, the man extended his arm to something beside Ronald, grabbed something small, and placed it in his hand. "You will need this," said the man.

They were glasses.

"I've never needed glasses before," said Ronald.

"You need them now," said the man.

Ronald looked at him. He was slightly taller than the average person, with black hair and strange-colored eyes. He wore an impeccable suit that didn't belong in the room covered in white.

"Who are you?" Ronald asked. His voice came out as more aggressive than he intended it to be.

The man groaned. "God, this job _suuucks_."

Ronald didn't answer. Instead, the reality of the situation began to sink in.

He remembered a shadow coming down on him just before what would surely be his death. It was the shadow of a person. Someone else had been in that pond with him, and he could logically assume that they had played the hero and "saved" him. They had fucked up his plans . . . for all Ronald knew, the man that was in front of him had been the one to do it.

Ronald sat there and listened to the man spout lies about his new job title being a Grim Reaper, and that that was his punishment for killing himself. He listened as he was told that he would never be able to see any of the people he cared about during his life, or it would tempt him to try to interact with them. He even listened, almost patiently, as he was told that the biggest punishment of suicide was that he would not be able to see the people he loved - his father, mother, and little sister - for hundreds and hundreds of years.

And then, when the man finally shut up, Ronld allowed the white-hot anger to wash over him and everything else in the room, including the asshole sitting across from him.

He didn't feel so far away anymore.

XXX

A/N: Alright, I wanted to explain something about Ronald in this fic. When writing this, I _did not_ ignore his party-loving, flirtatious personality . . . there just wasn't room to put it there. I also realize that it would be unlikely for him to fall in love with anyone (he'd have to have character development before that happened), so the thing with Luetta is a bit strange. Despite how Ronald looks at it, he didn't love Luetta, but he really, really liked her. She's the only one he would have wanted to stay around for awhile [except for any in canon, of course].

Oh, and I'm sure I don't have to tell you that the memories were his Cinematic Record.

Well, that's a wrap-up. I hope y'all enjoyed, and if you have any input - good, bad, constructive, whatever - I'd love to hear it. :)


End file.
